The Dad I Scarcely Knew

Tags

adoptee, adoption, Italy, reunion, separation

Note: Adopted people have two fathers: the original and the adoptive. On Father’s Day I thought about Giovanni Cecchini, the original, all day. Lately, as I massively declutter, I’ve come across albums with photos of my original father and me the few times we met. I’ve come to realize that Giovanni, my original father, did the best he could.

The stated mission of my memoir The Goodbye Baby: Adoptee Diaries is to “let the past be the past.” In my concluding essays, I suggested that “bygones should be bygones.” Since the publication of The Goodbye Baby, I’ve had second thoughts about those “bygones.” In the case of understanding ones adoption, the “bygones” adage may not be entirely true. History has been coming back to me, and I’m seeing things differently.
During this season of Father’s Day and the upcoming Summer Solstice, I’m thinking a lot about Giovanni Cecchini, my birth father. These are not comfortable thoughts, but rather regrets and self-recriminations. My birth father and I were never really together, as WWII was raging when I was a toddler. He was always out at sea, and the ill-fated marriage between Giovanni and my birth mother Velma was unraveling even as it was just beginning.

At age five, I was adopted by new parents. My adoptive father Richard, until his death a decade ago, was a major influence throughout my life. A professor of guidance and counseling at the University of Virginia, he was my advocate and hero. I deeply admired him. Giovanni was a shadowy background player, someone I saw just a few times in my life

The occasions I saw that original Dad, I was so full of hurt and resentment that I blew it. After we’d made contact (I was 40; he was 75), I accompanied Giovanni to his birthplace, San Martino Sulla Marruccina, Abruzzo, Italy. We stayed with my aunt and third cousins, my own flesh and blood. I was thrilled to be in Italy, in the land of my father’s birth, and I was hoping that we could get to know each other. I expected him to be the father I’d always been missing. It became obvious that he was hoping to see the four-year-old little girl he’d left behind.

We were sitting one morning at the tiny kitchen table of Cousin Josephina and I asked, “What are your memories of my mother, of Velma?” Giovanni replied, “Well, to tell the truth, you kind of remind me of her.” Retreating into a curmudgeonly silence, he did not elaborate.

I took the remark as a slap in the face. I was hurt beyond words. Father/daughter interactions went downhill from there. The Italian cousins were delightful. It was wonderful meeting them, but the father I’d hoped to bond with eluded me. He put it this way. “Too much water under the bridge.” I did not see him after our trip to the old country and he passed away a few years later.

In retrospect, I would change that moment at the kitchen table in Abruzzi. I might have changed the subject, been more open and loving, transcended my “poor little me” attitude. And if only I had. In the case of these fragile reunions with birth parents, there may not be second chances. A saving grace is the relationship I have with Giovanni’s second wife Margaret. Family members, no matter how distant or difficult, are to be cherished.

(This post was originally issued in 2013.)

Your feedback in invited. Please comment, and join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on life as seen through adoption-colored glasses.

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An Adoptee Abroad: Part Two

Tags

adoptee, American Cemetary, European travel, Honoring, Mastricht, Memorial Day, Operation Market Garden, Paying tribute, Remembering, The Netherlands

Visiting a WWII site in Holland

Dear Readers: I’ve just returned from visiting Mastricht and Nimegan in the Netherlands, sites of the WWII operation called Market Garden. The operation did not succeed in turning back Hitler’s armies and resulted in some 8,000 deaths of Allied soldiers. This somber reminder of war’s futility was one of the most meaningful parts of my recent journey to Holland and Belgium. I was adopted shortly after the end of the WWII…and in a way I’m a product of that conflict. Both my adoptive and original father served. They were among the lucky ones who returned. So many did not. On this day we honor those lost and those who fought in all wars for America’s freedom.

I was deeply moved listening to the guide at the American Cemetery in Mastricht. He explained that between five and ten thousand people visit the cemetery every Memorial Day to honor family members lost during the war.

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Speaking of WWII, From Calcutta with Love, a tribute to my adoptive parents, is being reissued by Pajarito Press in late 2019. More information to follow. Join me on alternate Mondays for reflections as seen through adoption-colored glasses. And please let us know if you have a WWII story you’d like to share!

An Adoptee Abroad – Part I

Tags

adoptee, Amsterdam, Canals, European travel, Learning and Discovery, Netherlands, Viking River Cruise, Wooden Shoes

Saturday, April 13: Dawn. My friend Peg and I were embarking on our fourth European adventure in that many years. Months earlier, we’d signed up for a Viking River Cruise to Holland and Belgium. Travel time, at last! Our northern New Mexico weather had been balmy, but a cold front moved in during Friday night. The world was covered in a layer of snow. In a winter wonderland we met and motored to Albuquerque by shuttle. So far, so good. Our plane was delayed, however, and the airport situation looked grim.The only way we could make our first connection was to order a wheelchair. This was legitimate, as I’m still recovering from a spinal fracture, not up to running some 20 gates to try to make the Houston connection. (https://tinyurl.com/y4tputkx) There was another wheelchair passenger, so the plane would wait five or ten minutes for us. Otherwise we would have had to start our European tour belatedly. In other words, it would have been a mess.
Miraculously, we caught the flight to Houston and then on to Amsterdam. Nine hours after leaving Houston, we arrived in Amsterdam and were welcomed on our Viking ship Tir before noon on Sunday the 14th. We settled into our stateroom. Peg went off in search of a maritime museum while I unpacked and strolled around the ship. Just 192 passengers on this journey, a good number. Dinner onboard, early to bed.

Our trip through the Lowlands

Monday, April 15/ AMSTERDAM
A city tour began the day, both walking and canal boating. From Kees, our tall Dutch guide, we learned about the city’s rich past and prosperous present. Passed by the “I” Building, a film center. Kees told us that last year, 1,500 river ships and 100 ocean ships visited Amsterdam. In the 1600s, the Dutch last India trading company reigned supreme. Spices were the main goods. By 1621, there was also a Dutch West Indies branch that traded with Africa and South America. Select merchants and traders grew extremely wealthy.

Tulips outside the Rijksmuseum hint at floral wonders to come

The canals we floated along were part of a former swamp. In today’s Amsterdam, there are 2,500 houseboats. They’ve grown increasingly expensive. What would cost 50,000 euros in the 1960s would now be 1.7 million. We passed by the famous wooden drawbridge (“Skinny Bridge”) and magnificent “city palaces.” Many of the buildings were fronted with symbols of what the dweller within did for a living. For example, a slave trader’s city palace boasted heads on either side of the front door.
The Golden Age of Amsterdam was from 1600-1700. A latter day boom began in the 1970s, when a huge cleaning effort dredged filth from canals and streets. Symbolically, that was when the first Dutch MacDonald’s opened. The cleanup effort continues to this day. Bikes, which are everywhere and being ridden by everyone, end up thrown into canals. Today, around 25,000 have to be dredged out each year.

Canals and waterways abound and are an important part of history

Back on board the ship, Tir, we were treated to an evening of wooden shoemaking. Henk, from Vollandam, carved out a pair of wooden shoes before our wondering eyes. A million and a half pairs are produced yearly, explained Henk, but there are very few wooden shoemakers left. It is painstaking work, not particularly profitable. All the tools involved in the making require special maintenance. The tools themselves are becoming rarer. Hardly any people are attracted to the trade, our shoemaker mused.
As we went from lounge to main deck, a wooden shoe dance was in motion, a most fitting end to the first day of this European get-away.
(To be continued).
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Join Elaine during the next several Mondays for more about the trip of a lifetime. Stay tuned as well for news about the republication of From Calcutta with Love and the debut of Clara and the Hand of Ganesha.

Letting Go of Letters

Tags

Adopted daughter, adoptee, Archives, Correspondence, Decluttering, Letters, memories, Nostalgia

“Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
January has flown, but February is also a great month for new beginnings. Inspired by Marie Kondo, queen of the Declutter World, I vowed to sweep through the entire house and prune the excess, reduce the redundancies, eliminate the irrelevant. It’s not the first time I’ve embarked a declutter campaign, but this time, I am being non-negotiable. My new motto: OHIO (Only Handle it Once). Years of selling stuff at neighbors’ yard sales, donating to charities, giving things away: I still felt hopelessly cluttered. The “things” grew back, multiplied, maybe even reproduced at night while I was sleeping.
Correspondence collections are close to my heart, harder to part with than books, photos, or just about anything else. Because it would be tough, I decided to start there. I recently tackled a column of banker boxes that resided in a closet, unopened, for several decades. I’d do my heirs a favor by going through, keeping a precious few letters, and taking the bulk of them to the recycle bin.
As an adult adoptee, I’ve always believed that the best way to know where to go, one must see where one has been.
“The past is not dead. It is not even past.” —William Faulkner
Not surprisingly, most archived letters were from my parents, both biological and adoptive. Giovanni Cecchini, the birthfather I got to see three times after I was adopted, was a Navy photographer during WWII. When he and his new wife Margaret moved to Amelia Island, Florida, he became a well-known photographer in the town of Fernandina Beach. He gardened and photographed for many years before his death in 1998. I travel yearly to Amelia Island to visit Margaret. On 12/29/91, Giovanni wrote “Another letter from me — lucky you (I guess).”
My birthmother Velma and I had a long correspondence, and I came across her epistle of 2/13/94. She wrote “Dearest Daughter, I had to peek at my Valentine on Friday (I sent one to her every February) but put it away until Monday…Your four parents are very proud of how you grew up to be beautiful with many talents.”
My adoptive dad’s WWII letters provided the material for my book From Calcutta with Love-The WWII Letters of Richard and Reva Beard (published in 2002 by Texas Tech University Press, due to be re-issued by Pajarito Press in 2020). He also wrote to me every Sunday until his death in 1997. His letters were filled with reports of his life with my adoptive mom Reva, observations about everything from world events to the weather. On February 18, 1990, he wrote “Dearest Elaine: This week has featured several wonderful springlike days, but today and to some extent yesterday were more like typical February weather. It has been dull, overcast, and just cold enough to be raw and uncomfortable outside — I know, I tried walking around the lake and even the Canadian geese looked discomfited.”
I am reading through the boxes of letters, keeping a precious few but relegating most of the epistles to the recycling bin. Typed and penned words from the past made time fall away. I was reminded of a time when letter-writing was the way to keep in touch. Those missives kept us close despite the miles in between. Now, with Email, Skype, Facebook, WhatsApp and other channels of communication, letters are nearly obsolete. With their passing, we will have lost something irreplaceable. On the other hand, think of that person who’d love to hear from you, not instantly. Perhaps it’s not too late to revive the custom of letter-writing.
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Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on life as seen through adoption-colored glasses. Do you enjoy writing letters? Comments are welcome!

The Goodbye Baby gives an insider view of growing up adopted.

Book Review: Sing for your Life

Tags

adoptee, Biography, Daniel Bergner, Martin Luther King Jr., Musical Career, Obstacles, Opera, Overcoming, Ryan Speedo Green

“I know why the caged bird sings.”—Paul Laurence Dunbar

As a writer of novels, I find life stories endlessly fascinating. That said, some are more interesting than others. As told to and by author Daniel Bergner, Sing for your Life, the biography of Ryan Speedo Green, is definitely in the latter category.
Ryan Speedo Green, a man with the heart and voice of an opera singer—a voice to be recognized only later—grew up in hard scrabble circumstances. Neglected son of mostly absent parents, he began life in a trailer park and later in a house across the street from drug dealers. Until music became part of his life, he was wild and out of control. By age twelve, he was in solitary confinement at a juvenile detention center. His future looked bleak.

How could someone like this rise to performing major roles at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and in Europe? Tracing Green’s journey from the mean streets of a nomadic childhood, Sing for your Life explores the challenges facing an African-American performer in the world of professional opera.
Green’s is an astonishing journey, one that was aided by dedicated teachers and mentors. Green’s teachers have stories of their own. One of the most pithy accounts is that of Mrs. Hughes, Green’s elementary school teacher. A short Italian Irish woman, her life-long ambition was to be a teacher.

As a third grader, Mrs. Hughes lined up her dolls and stuffed animals and led them through lessons. Years later, her dream of becoming a teacher became a reality. After years of teaching “regular” classes, she was given a room of “special” students. Ryan Green was one of them. Unruly and defiant, he threw his desk at Mrs. Hughes. She refused to be upset by his behavior, commenting that if Ryan wished, “he could learn from the floor, since his desk and books were down there.”
Later in the day, Ryan turned his desk upright and began to pay attention. This diminutive woman meant business. Mrs. Hughes, who had posted a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. in her classroom, had her students memorize the lines

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Mrs. Hughes was the earliest of mentors, and possibly the most influential, to help Ryan on his circuitous journey to the opera stage. Others helped him with language and diction, preparing solos for auditions and eventually to becoming the opera star he was destined to be. In 2011, at the age of twenty-four, Ryan, beat 1,200 other selected singers to win a nationwide competition hosted by New York’s Metropolitan Opera In the end, his formerly absentee father came to see him onstage. From that point on, his career soared.
I especially related to Speedo’s triumph over early adversities. As an adoptee, I began life with five years spent in tumultuous circumstances. (To learn more, check out my memoir The Goodbye Baby-Adoptee Diaries). But you don’t have to be an adoptee to relish this heartwarming, inspiring biography. National bestseller Sing for your Life is a great read for anyone who relishes tales of “race, music and family.”

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Join Elaine on Mondays for reflections on life as seen through adopted-colored glasses.

Comments invited!

Decades of diaries became my memoir, The Goodbye Baby

 

Adopting a New Year

Tags

adoptee, Albany, Friendship, Holidays, New Mexico, Niverville, Remembering, Renewal, Santa Fe, The New Year, Travel, Upstate New York

I’ve always believed that if you want to see where you’re going, it’s advisable to see where you’ve been. This holiday season allowed me to do just that…

I’m in love with a new part of America! (New to me, that is.) My friend Deborah Aydt Marinelli, a soul sister with whom I spent years of my much younger life,invited me to spend Christmas holiday with her in Niverville, New York. Because my sons and grandchildren wouldn’t be coming to visit until the end of December, I decided “Why not?” It would be only the second time I hadn’t spent Christmas in Santa Fe. The first time was when I travelled to India to research a novel. (That’s Clara and The Hand of Ganesha, to be completed in 2019).
Deborah is one of my most brilliant and accomplished friends. She’s a PhD in literature, a professor, world traveler, author of over a dozen books, mostly young adult novels. After losing her beloved husband Larry in the spring of 2018, she came to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to revisit old, formerly familiar places. We spent time together. Our mutual Santa Fe years, in the 70s and 80s, had created in us a deep bond, one that survived the 30 years that had passed since we’d last seen each other face to face. She knew my children when they were in elementary school; I considered her son and daughter as part of my own family.

Kinderhook Lake from Deborah’s window

When I accepted her gracious invitation to visit for Christmas, I fully expected to help her with estate and business matters. Having been through the process of losing a husband, I would be the supportivel amanuensis. Instead of that scenario, however, she treated me to a tour of the area around her hometown of Niverville, New York.
We enjoyed a magical performance of The Nutcracker in Albany. Other days found us at a matinee of the new Mary Poppins movie, and a beautiful program of Lessons and Carols at a Dutch Reform Church. I went with her to a Friends meeting in Chatham, we relished lunches at little general stores and country inns, feasted on shepherd’s pie at the Beckman Arms Inn in Rhinebeck, New Yorkthrough. The Beekman Arms has hosted many luminaries throughout the centuries, including President George Washington. Deborah invited nine of her friends on the 25th and we enjoyed a magnificent turkey dinner with lavish trimmings.

The Egg Performance Space in Albany, NY

After Christmas day, we traveled by car, bus and the subway to meet a friend for lunch in New York City. After lunch, we walked all over Greenwich Village and the West End, including along the iconic Highline. We passed by the former brownstone apartment of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, popped into galleries, found post-Christmas 80% off sales at small boutiques. Two sweaters for the price of one? Who could resist?
We drove through the countryside to attend events.The rolling land around Niverville and Albany is lovely. Forests, farmland, fields of sheep and llamas: a refreshing change from the high desert environment of northern New Mexico. We passed by the home of Robert Frost, Bard College, the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), the Village of Red Hook. Many villages, boroughs, and hamlets exist cheek and jowl in this corner of our country. Except for the often overcast skies of Winter (I’ve resided in the sunny Southwest too long), I could live there quite happily.

The Beekman Arms in Rhinebeck, NY

Nine days flew by. The visit, all too soon, came to an end. The best part had been reuniting with Deborah. I invited her to the sunny Southwest for Christmas 2019, and we vowed to keep in closer touch throughout the year. I’ve always believed that if you want to see where you’re going, it’s advisable to see where you’ve been. This holiday season allowed me to do just that. Discovering upstate New Year, an old friendship made new again, walking around The Big Apple: all of this comprised a grand finale to 2018.
May YOUR 2019 be full of health, happiness, prosperity and productivity. May we bridge the gaps with those who do not share our beliefs. As Gandhi put it, may we be the change we wish to bring. HAPPY NEW YEAR one and all!

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What was the best part of your holiday? Feedback invited! Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on life as seen through adoption colored glasses.

A Gift to You – The 12 Days of Adoption

Tags

adoptee, adoption, celebrate, Christmas, discover, family, friends, Holidays, wounded, writing

NOTE: Once again, I’m immersed in writing a novel, therefore, I’m republishing one of my favorite posts from the past. A reminder of what I appreciate, a song of gratitude. Adoption is a mixed blessing, but a blessing nonetheless. Here’s wishing you and yours a beautiful holiday season!

With much affection, Elaine

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An Adoptee’s Song:
“The Twelve Gifts of Adoption”

With Christmas and Hannukah seasons upon us, music fills the air. From the radio, Mall Muzak or live musicians, we often hear “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” In your imagination, listen to the melody… then read with an open heart as this ADOPTEE offers a different take on a familiar song…

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Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on life through adoption colored glasses. Please let us know what you’re most grateful for this holiday season!

 

Adoption: Still my “Something”

Tags

adoptee, adoption, adoption child, discover, empower, healing, separation, wounded

Note from Elaine: I continue to write adoption stories. Clara Jordan, heroine of my recent suspense novel All the Wrong Places, travels from Virginia to New Mexico hoping to locate an unknown birthmother. Instead of finding roots, she falls in love with a two-timer named Henry, a sly character who betrays her. She runs further into trouble as she searches petroglyphs for traces of a mother she’s never known. All the Wrong Places is available from http://www.pocolpress.com or from Amazon. My novel-in-progress, Clara and the Hand of Ganesha, takes our protagonist to the shore temple of Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu, India. Participating in NaNoWriMo, I plan to finish the first draft this month. Stay tuned!

 

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It’s been said that trauma is not a mystery, that it attaches itself to you in a way that’s hard to undo. My story, as related in The Goodbye Baby, offers living proof. Being an adoptee has added melodrama to my life, created a passion for writing, and ultimately inspired me to take off the masks and to discover who I really am.

Though I was fortunate enough to land in an adoptive family who loved and cherished me, it could not make up for losing that first “mother connection.” My birth mother and I said goodbye before I started first grade, and I waited 38 years for her to come back into my life. I was deeply wounded by the separation.

My struggles have been with feeling abandoned, isolated, and rejected. I’ve worried for years that I will be misunderstood and that I’m simply not good enough- as a daughter, a friend, a partner, a mother, or even as a human being.

With my infant son in Greece

Because of being adopted, I felt small and insignificant. Probably because adoption wasn’t something my family discussed, my negative assumptions became deeply embedded. Throughout my adult years, I accomplished a great deal, but in my mind, I was never admirable. Harmful pangs of inadequacy took root and shaped my outlook, my decisions, my disastrous romantic choices.  Until I re-read my diaries, I never realized that I myself had invented the self-damaging myth.

How did I deal with my adoption-induced complexes? My adoptive parents had to raise a delinquent teenager who drank excessively, stayed out too late and attracted bad boyfriends. As I grew older, I tended to be an over-achiever: running nine marathons to lower my finishing time, yet always “keeping score” and endlessly coming up short.

Thirty years ago, when I first started to write about my adoption, the title of my book was Reunions. My plan was to meet both my biological parents and write about finding the missing puzzle pieces. I met my original parents, but the reunions were not what I hoped for.  The pieces were in place but the puzzle remained. Only writing The Goodbye Baby completed the picture.

After both sets of parents died, I found that looking into the past gave me the wisdom to see where I’d been and how to go forward.

 

 

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What my adoption has taught me is that the world reflects my inner reality, that my happiness or unhappiness depend on my actions and not on outside forces. I’ve learned that it is never too late to make a fresh start.

I have always known I would be a writer. In the summer of 1962, I wrote in my diary,

“Some of this frantic recording is wasted energy. How can I have a future as a writer?…I need to find something to say.”

The theme of adoption is that “something.”

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Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption and sneak previews of her newest novel, Clara and the Hand of Ganesha.

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Three Steps toward Gratitude

Tags

adoptee, adoption, Attitude adjustment, Daily Practice, Deepak Chopra, Gratitude, Henri Nouwen

Resentment and gratitude cannot coexist, since resentment blocks the perception and experience of life as a gift…Gratitude as a discipline involves a conscious choice. I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions or feelings are still steeped in hurt and resentment. – Henri Nouwen

As we begin October, I’m counting my blessings. It’s been a year since a hiking injury resulted in a spinal fracture, and for months I thought I’d never be OK. Months of physical therapy and lots of walking have made me whole again.

But equally helpful has been practicing what Henri Nouwen calls The Discipline of Gratitude. Being out in nature with daily walking, savoring the good parts of every day, and support from wonderful friends: all of that has made a profound difference.

Santa Fe Botanical Garden offers a beautiful place to ramble.

While the issues of adoption never go away completely (You wake up in the morning and you’re still an adoptee), I’ve learned to cut through gloom by using the following tools. The first two mental routines are best practiced during a walk outdoors. The final process is to be done at day’s end.

STEPS TOWARD DEVELOPING THE DISCIPLINE OF GRATITUDE:
1. Walk your brain: This is a technique developed by my friend Beth, who leads a women’s Tuesday-morning brisk aerobic jaunt. After you’ve started walking, imagine a goal and think of five things that will move you toward accomplishing it. The goal need not be lofty: Anything from a chore you’ve put off for too long to applying for a job or writing an overdue important letter. Name your intention and concentrate on the five steps to achieve that goal. Do this throughout your 15 or 30 minute walk, and put the plan into action right away.

2. Practice the “shake it off” mental housecleaning movement: This is another technique best practiced while strolling. When you find yourself dwelling on the dark side, shake either your right or left hand out into the air, as though shooing away pesky insects.

3. Every night before falling asleep, think of five things that you’re thankful for, events of that particular day or conditions of your life in general.
Author, physician, and New Age guru Deepak Chopra maintains that “a gift resides in every moment.” By practicing the discipline of gratitude, one can learn to see those gifts, to find an opportunity behind every problem, and to walk through the darkest hours and come out on the other side.
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Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption and life. And check out her memoir The Goodbye Baby-Adoptee Diaries

Aspen Vista, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Poetry Monday

Tags

adoptee, adoption, appreciation, Comfort, Falling and Rising, healing, Life, Transformation, Wonder

As we approach the beginning of a new season, I’m adopting gratitude, celebrating health, and embracing life. If this sounds overly dramatic, let me explain…In 2017, the first day of Autumn brought a devastating hiking injury that took months to heal. That I’ve mended seems a miracle, and it fills me with appreciation for the body’s wisdom and ability to knit itself back together. In that spirit, I present one of my favorite poems…

“MYSTERIES, YES

by Mary Oliver

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds

will never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say

“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,

and bow their heads.”

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Join Elaine every other Monday for reflections on adoption and life. Your comments are welcome!